LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik explains why "the FDA just had the worst day in its history." Hiltzik says:
During a White House event Sunday, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn stood by silently in the face of an unsupported attack on his agency from the worst threat to public health in the U.S. today, President Trump. The event was held to mark Hahn’s capitulation to a political directive from the Trump White House, in approving an emergency use authorization for the use of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19 patients. In doing so, Hahn utterly misrepresented the findings of the Mayo Clinic trial of convalescent plasma treatment. Hahn, parroting Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said the study demonstrated a 35% reduction of mortality from the transfusion of convalescent plasma. That’s a gross misrepresentation of its results. Nevertheless, an inaccurate description of the results was repeated in a tweet by the FDA’s official spokesperson, Emily Miller, a former correspondent for the far-right, conspiracy-mongering One America News Network, OANN.
The author makes a bold statement that there was a gross misrepresentation and never gives any infomation to back up said claim. If the results of a study were dramatically different why doesn’t the author give the results. It makes it seem like the author is giving fake facts because he gives none to support his statement.